Facebook may be able to help you quit smoking, according to a UCSF study slated for release Thursday.
The study used the world’s most popular social media site to recruit 500 smokers ages 18 to 25. It exposed them to messages about quitting and counseling about quitting, all through Facebook.
The upshot: The Facebook users were 2½ times more likely to stop smoking than young adults who were exposed to more traditional online quitting programs — in this case, the National Cancer Institute’s smokefree.gov website.
The study, conducted between 2014 and 2016, is one of the first by a U.S. research institution to examine whether social media can help young adult smokers to quit. A 2016 Canadian study had similar findings — that young adult smokers who were targeted by a social media campaign were more likely to stop than those who used a telephone hotline.
Read more at SFchronicle.com
Find Contacts in Your Area
The Southwestern Regional Tobacco Coalition is a multi-county effort created to address the diverse issue of tobacco use in the southwestern health district of Pennsylvania.